Pollan: The Botany of Desire

From Scienticity

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Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire : A Plant’s Eye View of the World. New York : Random House, 2002. 304 pages with bibliographic references and index.

This book is about the complex relationship between people and plants. The premise is that plants please us so that we do what they want us to do. Easy example: humans cut down trees to plant crops, helping the food plants expand their territory. Pollan discusses four examples: apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes. Each of these plants evolved in such a way that people become their promoters. We've taken them thousands of miles from their points of origin; we've devoted art to them; we've been inspired by them.

There's plenty of plant science but also history (American settlement, witchcraft, Irish potato famine), biochemistry (brain chemistry) and even philosophy (the conflict of our Dionysian and Apollonian impulses). There is a lot packed into just 300 pages. The chapters on apples and potatoes are especially critical of our modern food ways as both are unsustainable monocultures and have caused a shrinking of the gene pool for each of those plants.

Overall, an easy read that will keep you thinking long afterward.

-- Notes by MKI